Really sorry to hear that you won’t be syruping this year Jim and David but as long as there is left overs from last year, it’s all good.
The weather is my foe this year. The 10 day forecast looks promising until those days actually get here and then it turns cold. I have 100 trees tapped and have only pulled off about 50 gallons of sap. If I could get 2 consecutive warm days, it would be great.
I have been cutting new trails on our property accessing more trees and exploring areas I haven’t seen yet. So there are rewards in the weather delays. The new trails will also help me access firewood that will be needed for future use. I sure wish I had the little log skidder that Jeff made. It would be ideal up here.

Bill, when I get my firewood from the woods I prefer to cut it right where it falls rather than dragging it through the dirt first. My chainsaw likes it even more… A narrow trailer with tall wheels and tires be you’re best friend. If you want to skid it why not put a winch on your tractor? I have always thought a 4x4 articulating trencher would make a great mini skidder. There is one on Craigslist now for $3500

I’m working like hell just to get a path wide enough for my ATV. The undulations are such that the ATV has a hard time in places pulling logs or dragging a trailer. I will post a video some time. I will need a cap cam as some of these guys have because both hands are needed to drive.

Look into a pasquali tractor parts are hard to get in North America you have only one place Italian tractor parts in Canada but they are great to work with. There are a few different versions of the small 4wd orchard tractors. They run on small air cooled diesel engines so I don’t know how the conversation to wood gas would work. I have a pasquali 988 which has a dead motor. But with the loader they are very handy tractors and not alot bigger then a 4 wheeler as far as the trail you need. I know with flotation tires it will walk across stuff my Honda 450 couldn’t have dreamed about crossing. I have seen people repower them with both electric motors and Honda 25 hp gas motors as well.

We had one nice day in the last week or so, it was yesterday. I decided to empty the bags so the sap wouldn’t freeze in them. Was only able to collect 20+ gallons. Today the high will only get to 24° F.
I will save this collection for the next time the sap runs.

Somone told me along time ago so I might be wrong that the water will freeze first and concentrate the sugar in the non frozen part of your sap starts to freeze skim the ice off the top before you bring it inside.

I have had people tell me about throwing the ice out of the bag and just taking the liquid. To me it didn’t make sense why the sugar would separate from the water when freezing. If that were the case, we wouldn’t be able to make Popsicle’s, right?

You can only save it for a couple of days before it spoils. You can save it longer if you put it under UV light, but you are better off to fire up your boiler to keep bacteria and mold or whatever from forming.

BillSchiller:

To me it didn’t make sense why the sugar would separate from the water when freezing.

The sugar lowers the freezing point, and it is heavier. some sugar does get stuck in the ice, but it isn’t very much. You can barely taste the sugar in the ice compared to the sap.

With the plastic bags, you really don’t want the sap to freeze in the bags because they will explode. However, the plastic bags also tend to warm up the tree faster and you get more sap production.

Bill, when I get my firewood from the woods I prefer to cut it right where it falls rather than dragging it through the dirt first. My chainsaw likes it even more…

I cut, split then haul too. I don’t have the eq to move the whole tree though. You can also leave the pile back there to dry, and come back later to get it after the trails have dried out so you aren’t putting ruts in them if it started to get soft.

You can only save it for a couple of days before it spoils. You can save it longer if you put it under UV light, but you are better off to fire up your boiler to keep bacteria and mold or whatever from forming.

What I found is when sap is in it’s liquid form it can be kept for 7 days at 38 degrees. This sap will freeze at the temperatures we are experiencing. My first batch of sap was a week and a half old and turned out great. I put it in the house for a day until it thawed out enough to detach from the bucket.

madflower69:

With the plastic bags, you really don’t want the sap to freeze in the bags because they will explode.

If I collect sap in the morning, it’s always frozen at the beginning of the season. The bags are nice because they allow room for the sap to expand into ice.

If there is sugar in the ice, I won’t be throwing it out. It takes a lot of work to set all this up for me. From what I could find in Maple syrup blogs, is there is sugar in it. There are conflicting findings as to what the sugar content there is from the thawed sap. So, does it depend on how fast it froze? Maybe when I’m more seasoned in making syrup, I will be more confident in what I do with the ice in the sap bags.

I was told any sugar that is in the ice assuming you still have alot of sap that isn’t frozen will take more fuel to evaporate out then it is worth. I only know what a friend tells me who has done a small amount since he was a kid with his dad. In a way it makes since you can take salt water and freeze it the ice will be almost 100 percent fresh water. It is a survival trick my brother learned in the military take the ice and melt it for fresh water in a pinch. I know it is also how cider jack was made from hard cider in the old days.

There are conflicting findings as to what the sugar content there is from the thawed sap.

melt it and use a sap hydrometer on it. I am guessing it won’t be much. for 2% sugar content it is 40:1 so .25% sugar content you are like 320:1. You do want to let it drain for a couple of seconds.

BillSchiller:

What I found is when sap is in it’s liquid form it can be kept for 7 days at 38 degrees.

you might be able to keep it that long if you can keep at a constant 38 degrees or lower. You can actually tell by the taste of it and how cloudy it gets. But I wouldn’t store it for very long. You are better off just boiling it off now and cleaning out your system rather then get mold in your syrup then you have to throw it all out and disinfect everything.

Correct, but if it was 38 degrees then the sap will run. If the sap is running I want to make syrup. So I am very certain this sap will remain in good condition until I get enough sap to cook.
If your theory is correct on the ice, then when I collect and most of the bag is frozen, the remaining liquid should already be syrup at a 40:1 ratio. I’m just having a hard time believing that can be so.

If your theory is correct on the ice, then when I collect and most of the bag is frozen, the remaining liquid should already be syrup at a 40:1 ratio.

Measure it. There is sugar in the ice. It depends more on how much how much you want to boil. Like if you only collected 5 gallons of sap, you might keep the ice to fill up your boiler. If you are sitting with your buckets full on what will be a warm day, you will probably toss the ice to reduce boiling time. since you can about double the sugar content and it is going to spoil if you can’t get it boiled.

But you should probably be keeping track of sugar content in the sap. It is good for record keeping and a sap hydrometer is only like 20 bucks.

In real cold like Bill has right now, the sap will keep for more than a couple of days at ambient temperatures. I would guess at least 5 days, possibly longer than a week. There won’t be much biological activity when it’s real close to the freezing point. A barrel on the north side of a building would be about optimal.

Yes Garry, what I’m saying is it’s frozen, it can’t go bad.When we hit 33 degrees and a little sun, the sap will run again. As soon as it runs again, with 100 taps, I will have enough to boil. This is the reason I’m not worried. What I’ve decided after my trial run, I don’t want to boil less than 40 gallons of sap. I would prefer to have 120 gallons to reduce at a time.